Donald Trump used a Sunday morning speech at a right-wing convention in Phoenix, Arizona, as a victory lap, doubling down on the idea that his clear but relatively narrow victory was in fact a landslide — and impressing on his supporters the idea that he is enjoying an overwhelming mandate.
“Our movement has not just won a mandate,” said Trump, who won the popular vote by about half a percentage point in the November election while capturing the Electoral College 312-226. “We have built majorities everywhere that will determine the future of our country.”
He addressed a crowd of supporters gathered for AmericaFest, an annual convention organized by the organization Turning Point USA, the political group that mobilized before the 2024 election to become swing state voters for Trump and give him control of both win conference rooms. at the start of his second presidency in January.
Over the past five years, Turning Point has become a right-wing juggernaut in the conservative movement and a home for activists who reject the old guard of the Republican Party as it was before Trump’s rise. Since 2018, the group has grown by more than 650%, generating more than $81 million in revenue last year. During the group’s weekend event, which fell just days before Christmas, Turning Point drew about 20,000 attendees — just under half of the attendance for this year’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee.
Trump’s keynote speech at the event underscored the group’s dramatic rise.
“Turning Point was great,” said Trump, who mentioned the group’s director, Charlie Kirk, by name. “He really is a great guy.”
During his speech, Trump basked in his victory and doubled down on his promises in the anti-immigration campaign. He even took a moment to reflect on the 2020 election, which Joe Biden narrowly won and Trump falsely claimed was stolen from him. This year, Trump claimed he won by “a landslide,” although his victory was also narrow but decisive.
He touted historically Democratic-leaning demographic groups that turned out in lower numbers during the 2024 presidential election, and claimed young people and Latinos as a new bloc in his base.
The effect of his comments, however exaggerated, was to instill in his supporters the idea that the election provided an unprecedented mandate to roll out his campaign promises, however controversial. He even brought his former enemy, Ted Cruz – the Canadian-born US senator from Texas – on stage to speak about Trump’s mandate.
“That was a great moment,” a laughing Trump said after Cruz left the stage, with personal attacks the president-elect once directed against Cruz’s wife, Heidi, during Trump’s successful 2016 White House campaign now a distant memory for the Texan.
Trump also emphasized the role of big business in supporting him – or at least capitulating to him. “Major business leaders called — a lot of them — and some of them weren’t exactly on my side,” Trump said.
“But now they are on my side.” (Trump reportedly recently dined with Amazon and Washington Post billionaire owner Jeff Bezos at Mar-a-Lago.)
During his speech, Trump spoke at length about the Panama Canal, doubling down on his threat on Saturday to reclaim the trade passage if Panama does not manage the route in accordance with his preferences. “We will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States now,” Trump said to loud applause.
Trump also campaigned for his top Cabinet picks, including Defense Department nominee Pete Hegseth; his intelligence pick, Tulsi Gabbard; Health Department nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr; and ultra-conservative Trump loyalist Kash Patel, whom he has proposed as Chris Wray’s replacement as head of the FBI. They are all involved in all kinds of controversies.
He then turned to immigration.
“My administration will live by the motto ‘promises made, promises kept,’” said Trump, who during his first presidency failed to deliver on some of his most memorable 2016 campaign promises, including building a wall on the US-Mexico border, which he paid for. by the Mexican government.
While going over his campaign promise to launch mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, Trump said: “We will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, even bigger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
The reference to Eisenhower alluded to Cold War mass deportations led by that president’s administration. That program resulted in the mass expulsion of nearly two million Mexican-Americans without due process, an event widely characterized as a form of ethnic cleansing.
Tom Homan, who was appointed by Trump to strategize his promised mass deportation, warmed up to the newly elected president and mocked critics of his anti-immigrant rhetoric. “Tom Homan is a racist, Tom Homan is an asshole,” Homan said. “Say what you want, I don’t care.”
He promised that the newly elected president would be a “badass” and warned the liberal mayors of certain US cities who vowed to oppose the mass deportation plan. “If you’re not going to do it, President Trump and Ice will,” Homan said, invoking the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Guess where Tom Homan will be on day one? Chicago, Illinois.”
Inauguration day, Trump declared, would be dedicated to the implementation of his hard-line immigration policy: “January 20 will truly be Liberation Day in America.”
